


no shade in the shadow of the cross

by rfk (jfk)



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Abuse, Catharsis, M/M, Minor Character Death, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-20 04:45:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4774013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jfk/pseuds/rfk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles returns to Colorado after seventeen years to find that many things have changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i'm troy mcclure! u may remember me from such works as 'alone aboard the ark'. 
> 
> this is a prologue.

_[Colorado Springs, 1998]_  
  
Miles’ swiss army knife shakes in his grasp.  
  
He has never given anybody a haircut before.  
  
Before him, the other boy kneels, facing the other way, towards the strident sky. It sinks upon the lake they found and swam in, and Waylon is still trembling from the breeze on his damp skin. The hair that hangs to the middle of his back is drying, still.  
  
His left hand is on Waylon’s shoulder, feeling the angry swell of a few wasp stings beneath his fingertips. The other hand is at his side, a clumsy fist made around his knife.  
  
He reads like all poetry in that moment. Teeming with all kinds of emotion, of fear and love and uncertainty. But a promise is a promise, much like a friend is a friend.  
  
His left hand moves down to take a strand of long hair, stroking down the back of the other boy, almost, in the process, before pulling the hair out until it is taught.  
  
“Are you sure?” He whispers.  
  
And in his impossibly soft voice, Waylon whispers back, “Do it.”  
  
Solemnly, Miles takes in a steady breath and, in a single motion, uses the blade to cut the strand of hair. The blade is sharp and the hair offers no resistance. He cuts as close to the scalp as he can, a length of limp hair curling gracefully down in one hand. It is so shocking and underwhelming all at once, that Miles does the only thing he can think to do.  
  
He hands Waylon the strand of hair, meekly, and says, “You want me to keep going?”  
  
Waylon nods. “Cut it all.” He says.  
  
So Miles does. 


	2. fourth of july

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for characters being misgendered! if this kind of content upsets/triggers or otherwise affronts you please read at your own discretion. my intention i not to harm or misrepresent any members of the LGBQT community, but if you feel this work has in some way done any of those things please let me know.

[Leadville, 2015]  
  
Waylon comes bearing flowers. The only ones he could find on the journey over; white lilies. The ones that are practically songs for the dead.  
  
The paper they are swaddled like newborns is moist in his nervous grip, uneasy in the knowledge of what’s still to come. He feels so woefully unprepared –and yet, he knows nothing more can be done. The hair that once hung at his shoulders is close-cropped and hidden beneath a hat. He is tired and unshaven, looking as if he slept in clothes.  
  
Truthfully, he didn’t sleep.  
  
He stands in the middle of the corridor for some time, feeling as if he is the air around his skin, and not the spirit within it. Around him, fluorescent lights dance on the surface of his shoes. Stretchers glide by as if on ice, nurses pirouetting from door to door, melodyless announcement cutting through the sterile silence every now and then.  
  
It takes him time to push forward, finding his feet heavy and uncooperative.  
  
Outside, he can hear fireworks, and celebrations for the fourth of july. His insides are as the sky in that moments, bright and bursting –sudden flashes of fear lighting him up.  
  
He walks slowly and sadly, for what seems like miles but is merely to the room at the end of the hall. Her room. From the outside, he lingers, listening to the machines inside that signal life. It is almost enough to remain there, knowing that he is here, close enough to her without injury.  
  
Eventually, though, a nurse emerges, and seems alerted for a moment by his presence. She takes one look at him and says, “Mrs Park requested that she only be visited by family, sir.”  
  
Inwardly, Waylon swells and deflates, conflicted at his own jubilation and what would be his only failure in her eyes. “I –I’m family.” He says, quietly. “I’m her son.”  
  
The nurse pauses in thought, her head turning slightly towards the closed door as if trying to map Waylon’s Persian eyes and long-limbed genes from the woman in the bed. “Mrs Park’s only remaining family is her daughter, Leila. She has been asking about her all week, but she hasn’t mentioned a-“  
  
Leila. The name makes him hot and angry, but the feelings are futile devices. He knows that in coming here it is a word he will hear again and again, with smaller offences that harrow him. He knows that –and yet here he is, with his flowers, and his apologies and resentments. There are no _whys_ or _becauses_.  
  
“Please.” He says, unsure what the word can do for him. “I am--...I was...” Even as he tries, Waylon cannot bring himself to continue speaking, his tongue snapping back into his jaw like a barbed wire snare.  Frustrated, his voice comes out hard to his own ears even though it is always soft. “I want to see my mother.”  
  
The nurse looks back at the door again and shifts, wanting to treat her other patients but unsure what to make of Waylon. He does not know how to feel about the fact that his mother is visible on his face: in his cupid’s bow and his high cheeks dark hair. “I’m sure you do.” She says, uncertainly, “But policy clearly states--”  
  
From within, they hear a dry, rasping cough, and then a thin, rattling voice. “Is that Leila?”  
  
The nurse turns her body towards the door and opens it very slightly, so only she is visible. Waylon is fine with that –his every instinct thrilling to hide himself from that voice. It sounds like all the promises Leila was supposed to fulfil: the rites to his springtime, his beauty and his partners and his children (wholly his, wrought of nothing but biology). Waylon stands in her place with flowers like a funeral garland.  
  
“There’s a young man to see you, Mrs Park.” The nurse says, very softly. “He says--”  
  
“Let me see my daughter.” She demands. Even in the bed of her death, she still finds in within her to interrupt, and to overrule. It makes the nurse positively weak with chagrin, but she has no power or fire within her equal to the heat of Memphis cooling in the bed of the dying woman. “Is that you, Leila?”  
  
Waylon doesn’t know what to do. God, he knows he doesn’t want to see her, but the vacancy within him demands it. Swallowing, he looks earnestly at the nurse once more and sighs. “It’s –it’s me, mom. It’s-...” His chest burns with betrayal, but he will not be brought to his knees so easily. “It’s Waylon.” She says nothing, and he feels the terrible desire to flee, but stays, forcing himself to ask, “Can I –can I come in..?”  
  
The nurse’s face grows cold with regulation. “I can’t just let you--”  
  
Fear is making him desperate. He feels everything he has ever felt in that moment, and has to stop himself from crying or yelling. His greatest vice is that he is so very emotional: so much so that as a child his mother would have to take him outside and tell him to ‘calm down, angel, you’re makin’ a scene’.  
  
Swallowing, Waylon slumps in defeat. “At least –at least let me give her these. Before...before she...”  
  
The nurses’ pager goes off in that moment, and she stares up at him, searching his face for signs of suspicion or malice. Finding none –none at all, indeed, she sighs, and says, “I hope I don’t regret this.”  
  
That’s all she needs to say. Waylon nods, bowing his head, letting her depart. He takes a breath in, listening to the soft beep of his mother’s lifeforce waning, and her dry, desperate coughs. Should he have come sooner? Was he merely waiting for the inevitable as a reason not to face her one last time? No answers are clear, and all he can do is muster his strength, and steel his nerves, staring at the back of the door.  
  
He swears he can feel her through it, this oppressively loving energy, unmalleable, hard and shapleless. It causes him pause, but he pushes through it, as he did with immeasurable grace, throughout his childhood. It surprises him how easy it is to push the door, slightly, and then he’s inside.  
  
Her room is small. The roads from the below the window are loud. Waylon always thought that death would be –that things would be different Grander, somehow.  
  
His mother, worst of all, as white as the snow of Stalingrad, lifts a feeble hand towards his very presence and looks upon him with eyes the colour of his own. Her face is so much older than he remembers, her body shapeless is the way an old woman’s becomes, her hair thin and grey like starlight.  
  
“Oh, Leila,” She whispers, “You look so thin.”  
  
Waylon could say much the same, but he doesn’t.  
  
“You used to have such a lovely figure. You were--” She pauses only to cough again. “You were so--”  
  
Waylon is sat by her bedside now, unable to hear what she is saying. Not because she is quiet or muffled but because he is numb to it. Woodenly, he tries a smile and raises the hand that holds the flowers, laying the bouquet to rest on her lap, as if saying them on her grave. “I brought you some flowers.”  
  
Just as he lets go of the bouquet, he cold, winkled hand lays on his wrist, her arm white and hairless, paler even than he. “I thought you’d grown out of all this tomboy nonsense, Lei--”  
  
His correction comes out as spitelessly as he can manage. “My name is Waylon, mom.”  
  
Her hand tightens around his wrist, almost possessively. She still feels after all these years that she owns his identity, or that she is owed it for the blood they share. “No,” She whimpers, sounding even weaker –sounding hurt. “You’re my little girl--”  
  
Waylon desperately wants to withdraw from her touch. It burns him. Her knife cuts him but in the cleanest way: she never means to hurt him in the way she does, and yet it is no excuse for the injury. For the denial of himself from one who is supposed to love him unconditionally. “I’m still –still your child, mom. It’s still me.”  
  
She shakes her head at him once more, her eyes terribly misty, though she has no right to tears, a lonely vampire preying on the shadow of his past, inhaling it. “This isn’t you, Lei. You were so pretty. You were--...”  
  
Seeing no other way, he grasps her hand, finding himself overwrought with emotion, and stares into her eyes, hoping that after all these years, she’ll finally see him. “But I’m happy now. I –I’m finally me. Aren’t you...aren’t you happy for me?”  
  
How many times has he asked her this, not in the same words, but in a thousand others? His father, unshackled by what any God had to say was always the more understanding. When Waylon returned home from summer camp with his hair sliced short by a swiss army knife, his mother cried and wanted to punish him, but his father was inert.  
  
She has never had the heart to be –or perhaps too much. It doesn’t matter now, Waylon tells himself. He just wants to say goodbye. He just wants her to see him –to see him for what he is and say goodbye to the person he is, and not the person he was.  
  
His mother looks at him weakly, the invincible woman he was so afraid of, the one he called for a time ‘mom’, and then, longer, ‘Adelaide’, and then not at all, the wind abducting her name and memory to him.  
  
“I don’t know what’s going to happen.” She whispers to him, and the fireworks sound louder now, crackling in this distance. Waylon doesn’t know either. It scares him to hear that, even though he knows that she is fading, fast. Somehow he always thought there would be more time –that nearer the end they would fix this. That in her closing moments she would finally see him for exactly what he is, and not a ghost.  
  
She murmurs, “I’m scared.”And Waylon has to stop himself from saying, ‘me, too’.  
  
Instead, he takes her hand and nods, “I know.”  He knows of grieving or dying –and no words suggest themselves to him. In these, her last days or moments, he thinks he should have some words that attempt to heal the rift between them. If this is his last chance, then he is failing, and he resents the feeling that he has always failed her.  
  
She says nothing, either, and he thinks at least they have failed eachother equally. After all these years, there’s a victory in that.  
  
The silence twitches like fire. It burns. Waylon has to say something, and so he asks, “Did dad come?” He knows that his father wouldn’t –nor would he be called, or asked. Maybe he is trying to punish her in the asking.  
  
She takes a terrible breath in and shakes her head. It seems to him so pathetic—she isn’t even strong enough to spite his father. Waylon feels the need to apologise, then, not on behalf of the emptiness in the room, but that he could even ask. “I’m sorry.” He says.  
  
And without missing a beat, she replies in her weakest voice, “I know, Lei.”  
  
He leans back and withdraws his hand, bringing it up to his face to cover his mouth. God, he wishes he hadn’t come, but knows like gravity he was always going to, inexplicably drawn to the blood.  
  
He thinks the only reason he came was to heat her say his name, at long last. Just once, before she goes.  
  
For some reason his mind races over miles of memories of his childhood, searching or his happiest memories of her, as if to be kind to her in spirit. Of a childhood laced into colours he didn’t like and clothes he couldn’t run in.  
  
Without taking her hand, Waylon leans forward again, and murmur, “D’you remember –remember when I got home from summer camp –a-and I had cut my hair?”  
  
The old woman nods, faintly, not truly smiling, her gaze almost sleepy.  
  
Waylon doesn’t look at her any longer. He stares at her wrinkled hand and continues to talk. “We cut it in the tent the night before. Me and this other boy. God--...I was so sure you’d kill me.” He shakes his head. “I was so scared that I wore that dress to dinner –just to prove that I was sorry.”  
  
It only seems to distress her further. She takes in the smallest breath possible and swallows, her large eyes on his. His smile dies to see it, knowing then, somehow, that she will never be able to give him what he came for, even this close to the end of it.  
  
Taking her hand once more, he sighs. “I –I’m glad to see your doing well.” He whispers. “But I should...I should go, mom.”  
  
shaking her head, her hand grasps weakly at his, but he pulls away, trying to ignore the vitriol that fills him as she murmurs, “No, Lei, no...”  
  
He cannot help himself. “Say my name.” He says, wounded. “Just once. Just once for me. Say it.”  
  
They remain in silence for some time. He waits, as he did his childhood and as he has for all these years, wanting nothing more than to be seen. To be seen and recognised and accepted, at least –maybe not loved, but at least--...at least received by his own mother. And to realise, on her deathbed, that it was nothing more than a wild dream fills him with disgust.  
  
In this veil of great surprises, he has to wonder if she had ever loved him, daughter or none. He has to wonder if he will care, if she survives this.  
  
Going limp, numbness rising within him, he pulls away from her hand, and feels himself stand suddenly. From the bed, she paws at him, but Waylon feels nothing. He turns away from it and begins to walk towards the door. He says nothing to her, and hears nothing she has to say.  
  
Does it hurt, he thinks, when he disappoints her like this? When he rejects her plea for some kind of mercy?  
  
As he passes through the door, he thinks to himself: if she is hurt and disappointed and scared, then she finally knows how he has felt for these past seventeen years.  
  
-  
  
At the arrivals of Central Colorado Regional, Miles takes in a breath of mountain air.  
  
His first in seventeen years.  
  
-  
  
Waylon sneaks home in measured silence, like a thief in the night.  
  
He cannot say where he has been. His childhood, and family, and all things in the past that were named ‘Leila’ are secret, and hidden and shameful. Waylon will invent reasons for being home late, not out of cruelty or love of secrecy but for protection.  
  
The house is not empty. Eddie will be home.  
  
Eddie was the first to receive Waylon as he is, and as he wants to see himself –shiny and new and complete and passing and real. No strings tied to his fingers that cause him to tap dance out a dead name but a real boy. He sees Waylon and loves him, in his own way.  
  
Waylon does not have many instances in his own life of that acceptance, and he clings to Eddie, grateful, loving –scared.  
  
Eddie took him in when he was a whisper of the man he is now, thin as death, moneyless, nameless, jobless. He may not be the best man, but he is Waylon’s man.  
  
He creeps down the hall, his socks soft and quiet and carpet towards the sitting room light, where he can hear the whistle of the radio distantly, like his mother’s breathing, and the lighter, warmer shades of singing. To hear it relieves his fear, and he makes his arrival known, entering the kitchen and finding Eddie sat at the dining table, intently hemming the bottom of a long, turquoise gown.  
  
On seeing Waylon, he pauses, his singing dying off to a quiet.  
  
“I took a long walk through the park.” Waylon says, even before hello. “It was a long day at the office.”  
  
Eddie continues to look at him, and takes a deep breath in before nodding, stiffly. Waylon doesn’t know what to do beyond coming to sit across from Eddie, dipping his head in guilt, but not at his own lateness, though it may appear that way. “I’m sorry.” He says, “I should’ve called.”  
  
Eddie rises, his expression hard to read –but what Waylon perceives to be dour. “I’m afraid dinner is already cold, Darling.”  
  
The endearment is sharp and worrisome. Waylon is unsure he wants to hear it.  
  
He rises and goes around the other side of the table, as if following Eddie. “I didn’t want to come home in a bad mood.” Gently, he crosses in front of Eddie and almost tries to pause him. “I didn’t mean to take so long.”  
  
Eddie makes a noise of understanding, and looks down at him –physically and otherwise. Waylon isn’t a small man, but feels woefully small under a gaze so spiteful. “Of course you didn’t.” Eddie says, in a small but powerful voice. “I’m sure you weren’t thinking of anything, were you?”  
  
Waylon already feels guilty. His mother’s dying apparition is holding onto his back by the claws and those words only further the feeling. Truthfully, he is sure of what he is, and none of those things are careless, or feminine or deserving of this.  
  
Out of frustration, Waylon stares back at him in exasperation. “I’m sorry, alright? I was trying to be--”  
  
An enormous hand snaps out and seizes his wrist, pulling it up so that Waylon is reminded of how small and insignificant he is. “I know you were with someone, Darling.” Eddie warns him. His grip is vicelike and it burns.  
  
Waylon doesn’t dare to fight back right away, lost for words at the accusation. He has closed the door to that life, and the pain of opening it is worse than weathering Eddie’s temper.  
  
Floundering, he tries to speak “I-I wasn’t--”  
  
“I’m trying to be patient with you.” Eddie starts to twist. “But I don’t like lies.”  
  
Waylon’s other hand is up, now, trying to put force in the opposite direction. It wouldn’t take much for Eddie to break his arm, it wouldn’t –and he is scared. “Eddie, please.” He whispers, desperately, unsure of what he did to deserve this. “I didn’t--” He cries out in pain and tries to jerk away. “I didn’t do anything!”  
  
The harder he jerks, the more the rage is Eddie’s face rises, and the more fury he can see, the more desperate Waylon is to get away.   
  
But he is weak, and afraid, and Eddie soon involves his other hand, throwing Waylon against the fridge and pinning him, one hand twisting his arm to the edge of breaking, the other at his throat.  
  
“After everything I’ve done for you,” He hisses, his voice full of thunder, “You think you can lie to me?!”  
  
Waylon splutters, the air in his lungs becoming hot and overexposed. He tries to claw the hand away from his throat with his only free hand but it does nothing, and as he grows more desperate his attempts becoming nothing but gentle pawing.  
  
“I never –never lied--...” He gasps, coughing out angrily.  
  
Eddie doesn’t hear a word of it. He is already taken with a terrible and consuming rage, his temper flared beyond talking down. When he speaks, he roars, and Waylon is helpless at the accusations. “Tell me!”  
  
Waylon feels worrisomely faint, and the shock and it gives him the fear he needs to kick out, battering his legs wildly until he manages some purchase, catching Eddie harshly in the upper thigh. In a moment, Eddie lets go of him, staggering backwards, and Waylon falls to his knees, coughing out.  
  
His chest heaves in fire and delight for breath, but as he sees Eddie advancing, fear rises in him again and he scampers, uselessly, trying to get to his feet as he rushes left around the dining table.  
  
It does no good. Eddie wrenches him backwards by the collar and whacks him so hard that Waylon goes sideways again, hitting the floor hard on the side of his face.  
  
That’s all it takes to draw blood.  
  
And when Eddie sees, it’s as if something lights up within him, ad his voice is calm and gentle. He is at Waylon’s side in a second, a look of terrible shame overcoming him.  
  
“Oh, Darling.” He whispers, one large hand adjusting Waylon’s face so that he can see the injury in the light –Waylon’s lip slit, and the side of his face throbbing and dull, certain to bloom to bruising come the morning. “Are you alright? Tell me you’re alright.”  
  
There is suddenly so much tenderness in his voice. As if he is but a vapour, Eddie pulls him to a crouch and stares at him with such compassion that Waylon can hardly process the two scenes existing side by side. It always feels like this.  
  
He is dizzy from the hit. With plasma-yellow teeth, he nods, sheepishly.  
  
Eddie kisses him –Waylon does nothing but sway slightly, pained spiritually, weak bodily, wanting rest and shelter from the day. It seems to be sensed, and Eddie looks over him once more. As Waylon goes to stand, his bones feeling brittle and more fragile than flower stems, he is guided to a seat.  
  
“You’ll make it worse if you don’t stay still.” Eddie tells him, and he sounds almost pleased in his kindness. At Waylon’s look of reproach, his voice is like steam when he says, “I won’t be a moment.”  
  
In that moment, Eddie goes, and Waylon hears nothing but the gentle sway of the radio –something blues and cool, not a million miles from Gerhard Trede. It is his only comfort in the moment, sitting there, bewildered and dizzy.  
  
Eddie loves him, he knows. The man accepts him wholly as he is, shiny and complete and fully himself. Who else could offer such a thing? Who else could love him? His mother cannot –couldn’t –never did, and it reminds him. All of it reminds him to be grateful to Eddie.  
  
So when the other man comes back with a soft, wet hand towel and an embrace, Waylon takes it, gratefully. It goes like this: Eddie won’t ask him for the rest of the night, too consumed in fussing, and Waylon will come home on time, and he won’t toy with Eddie as he did tonight. He knows how it goes. He knows how lucky he is.  
  
Eddie cleans him up and he smiles, even with tears drying in his eyes.   
  
-  
  
[Colorado Springs, 1998]  
  
There is hair everywhere.  
  
What’s left on Waylon’s head is dry now. The other boy no longer shakes, and the sun has dipped from it’s resting point on his shoulder to look as if it is sinking in the orange waters of the lake. This is the first time Miles has seen the mountains, and he is barely looking at them.  
  
Cramped, and nervous, still, he pulls away and retires the army knife to the stony sand besides him. His palms are sweaty and he feels terribly human.  
  
“Is that all of it?” He hears the other boy ask, in a soft whisper, like the mountain breeze.  
  
Miles nods, and then coughs out a reply. “That’s as short as I could get it.”  
  
Without having even seen it yet, Waylon says. “Thankyou.”  
  
Truthfully, it looks terrible. The cut is lopsided and the fringe is much too short. It looks patchy and Miles feels as if this is all his fault. Waylon had made it sound fun when they decided to wander away from the rest of the camp. Miles thought maybe they’d explore, or find a cave, or make a fire and tell stories. He didn’t think he’d have to disfigure his best, and only, friend.  
  
Silently, he watches Waylon rise and go over to the waters of the lake, pausing at ankle-depth and leaning over to watch his trembling, distorted reflection. In the sunset, the boy is golden and Miles watches him from the distance, terrified but enamoured by him.  
  
He feels guilty for finding all the things with his eyes that the other boy hides, the softness of his mostly hairless legs, and the slight flare of his hips. It complements the rest of the boy so seamlessly, his strong legs and long arms and the intensity of his expression.  
  
Waylon stands at the edge of the lake for some time, and Miles thinks that he’s unhappy until he hears a sharp intake of breath, and Waylon is looking at him, a hand touching the sharp edges of his hair in disbelief.  
  
The other boy is in tears. But he’s smiling.  
  
-  
  
[Leadville, 2015]  
  
The mountain air comes back to him.  
  
Miles wakes unable to breathe.  



	3. down to the river

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i got sidetracked that's my bad. here's some gay. 
> 
> WARNINGS: mentions of childhood and domestic abuse, parental neglect, mentioned misgendering, negative relationships to food. 
> 
> if there is anything else you feel should be included please let me know. it's 4:54 am here so.

 [Los Angeles, 1991]  

Lindsey comes running inside, screaming.

“Mom!” There are tears like lightning lighting up her eyes. Her face is stiff with anguish. “Mom, it’s Miles!”

The girl is shivering through the tears, her body shaking with breathlessness. She is hysterical. her mother stands, and comes over tentatively, putting an arm on the girl’s shoulder, and stroking softly. “Mom, I didn’t —I didn’t know what to do—…”

“What’s happened?” A mother’s words should never be so quiet, and so cautious.

and Lindsey can say no more, collapsing, sobbing, near-screeching in her terror. “I didn’t see —I was too late—…the car—…”

Her mother pauses, very briefly, her face blank and white with confusion, doubt and paranoia, until the words connect to a worse outcome than all of those feelings. Miles —her only son, Miles!

She screams his name, leaving Lindsey knelt in the living room, sprinting towards the front door, tears already in her eyes. She is unready to see, unwilling to lose what she has held so dear for but these last six years.

Yet, when she heaves the door open, there is nothing to see. No bleeding asphalt or gaudy marks on small boys.

Miles is sat on the sidewalk, continuing to draw absent-mindedly.

-

[Decatur, 1995]

His mother is knelt in front of him once more. she stares at him, in horror.

Usually, he’s the one staring at her like this. Because, usually, she’s the one who’s been hit.

“What did that Andrew do to you?” She asks.

The ticking clock in the principal’s office is so ominous that it scares Miles. He doesn’t think he has done anything wrong, but he never does. Inevitably he ends up here, for a plethora of offences he doesn’t yet understand. this is his first time being here for a fight.

His mother takes a tissue from her purse and goes to dab at some of the blood on Miles’ face, but his father pulls her away with his words. “Don’t coddle the damn boy, Miriam, you’ll make him soft.”

Blanching, she merely hands the issue to Miles, who says nothing, staring at her as if he doesn’t understand. He can only guess what ‘coddling’ is. He knows his father uses it to describe some behaviours his mother has like cutting his food or hugging him or letting him cry.

How was Miles to know wiping away blood would be another?

Afraid to raise a hand to him further, his mother wipes down her dress and stands, going to the other side of the room, her hand flying up to her face so she can chew her nail nervously. She is neurotic in nature, but especially so around her husband. Miles can see her mousy face vacant with worry.

His father takes her place before him, his police badge shining like a talisman from his belt. “What did I tell you about fights?”

Miles looks at the floor. His nose hurts. “Not to start them.” He murmurs.

A forceful hand slaps him on the back in a way that is meant to be jovial but it hard and painful. “Not unless you can finish them, yeah?”

[Leadville, 2015]

No alarms. Eddie wakes him up again.

“Darling, His voices gleams, essential as sunlight. “Darling, you’ll sleep the day away.”

Waylon has always been fond of the bad they share. The mattress is soft and the sheets are thick and inviting. he feels as if he as adrift within a sea of clouds, the linen soft against his face as helots his head, sleepily. White light drifts from overhead. The dark of the night is gone, and there are no more ghosts.

The bed is cold where Eddie sleeps, wrapped around him, keeping him safe. Now, the man is out of his bedclothes, at the door with a tray in his hands. He waits for Waylon to address him, lucidly, before approaching, his feet gentle on the wood. Eddie slides onto the side of the bed and waits for Waylon to sit up, unsticking some hair from Waylon’s brow softly, before turning his afce.

He looks at the bruised circle around the cut on Waylon’s cheekbone, and then at the slight split on his lip. They do not kiss yet. things must be mended first.

Guilty, Eddie does not meet his eyes. “Are you in any pain?”

Shaking his head, Waylon leads forward so that their noses touch. He shakes his head, and smiles, “I’m okay.” One of his hands comes up to Eddie’s face, and he tries to find the other man’s eyes. “It’s okay—”

Grasping his hand, Eddie looks at him, pained, “I would never intend to harm you—”

“It’s okay.” they finally meet eyes, and now it is Eddie that looks afraid, grasping Waylon’s wrist with the desperate tenacity of a child, as if he fears Waylon will fade into nothing but vapour in seconds. It scares Waylon so much that he laughs, quietly. “I know you wouldn’t.” he says.

Still grasping him, Eddie’s look of desperation doesn’t waver. “I will make it up to you, I promise.” His other hand moves from steadying the tray in his lap, and comes around to Waylon’s face, caressing Waylon’s face with his fingertips so gentle that is nearly ticklish. “I love you.”

Waylon promises, “I love you, too.”

What else is there to say? Eddie is looking at him with such autocratic devotion, as if he’d crawl through landlines, just to feel love.  Waylon knows that’s why he gets the way he does  —and it’s are, so rare, that his temper is ever lost. But Eddie had been right. He had been somewhere else, and for all Eddie knows it could have been anyone, so really, he had a right to be angry.

It matters to him less and less as Eddie’s touches become more intimate to him —until they’re kissing, and every part of him thrills because however painful the past, his present is exactly what he has worked for.

[Buena Vista, 2015]

For the first time in years, Miles come home.

To one of them, at least. He was moved so much, from state to state, that he now can’t think of settling. All of that travelling makes him long for the open road.

In the driver’s seat is Lindsey, the sister closest to his age. She looks more like his father than he remembers, her once black and curly hair bleached to a hard blonde, straight and sensible. The bohemian skirts and necklaces that characterised her in their youth, especially of their time in Colorado have been ironed out and replaced with work clothes —even more sensible.

The beginnings of an acoustic song start on the radio, and immediately, she turns it off without removing her eyes from the road. She just wants to get Miles to his destination.

There are years between them of tension and resentment in the quiet of the journey. None of those are from Miles, so he tries to initiate conversation. “You still working down at the courthouse?”

In his attempt to be friendly, his phrasing appears to affront her. Icily, his sister says, “You can say lawyer. That is what the degree is for.”

Miles nods. “Of course.” He says, trying to keep out of dark waters with her. It’s nearly impossible. brightly, he says, “It’ll be good to see Mom again. She loves having us all together.”

The turn signal begins to beep. Lindsey stares so hard at the road that he wonders if it will burst into flames. “I don’t know what you did.” She warns him, her voice cold. “But we know you only came to ask for her help.”

Injured, Miles turns to her, helplessly. “That’s not—”

“Look.” Lindsey coughs. “Whatever mess you’re in this time—…she can’t save you from everything, okay?” the car turns, and aside, she says to herself. “Only from dad.”

He blinks, and turns his head to stare out of the window. he watches the smaller towns pass by, trying to remember any of his time in Colorado. but his memories pass by even faster than what surrounds him, watching years of his life in wildly different places go with obscurity. Much he remembers. Much he can only recall through the inheritance of over-told anecdotes.

There was always so much going on in their childhood. They were dragged from state to state near-endlessly, with Miriam putting her miseries and fears as secondary to her husband.  There were inevitable and frequent nights when she’d be made to be sorry, and all of her four daughters would fix her face for the sunday service. Not that dad ever cared much for Lindsey, or Allie, or Cecilia or Jenny.

Not that he really cared for Miles, but he at least gave Miles time. His youngest child, but somehow his most precious for no merit more than vanity. Finally —a boy! A son to invest into, who could be anything dad never was: a boxer, a baseball player, a police chief. That dream died seventeen years ago.

It’s no wonder to Miles that Lindsey always seemed to be acting out, or telling lies. All of them, after a time, were so starved for attention and love that they’d fight for each others. Mom did her best, but was busy walking the tightrope of her marriage. It’s how she is remembered to them. A good woman, but a woman of silk, unfit to bandage wounds but being pressed to them anyway.

Lindsey is the sharpest blade he can cut himself on, but she’s soft when it comes to her sisters. It is the avenue of less resistance, he feels.

“How’s Allie?” He asks, striving for breeziness.

Lindsey casts him a look. She is perhaps the prettiest gorgon, but the look turns him to stone nonetheless. “You’d know if you ever kept in touch.” then, perhaps realising her cruelty, Lindsey softens. “She’s still lecturing on Classics at the university.” A dark smile graces her features quite momentarily. “She always was the smart one.”

Miles nods, and then smiles, a memory occurring to him. “You remember when she told her teacher that you were all in a coven together?”

Lindsey nearly even laughs at that. “All the boys were afraid of us after that. We loved it.” They turn off the road and start down a much more rural track, closing in on where mom is. Lindsey sighs. “I wish we had stayed here longer.”

Miles remembers little of Colorado. They stayed a just less than a year, but it is eclipsed in his memory entirely by summer camp —by the boy he knew once, the one that got him into so much trouble. It didn’t end with camp counsellors and a bad haircut and angry parents. It didn’t end until his parent’s marriage had been torn apart.

A strike of sudden and horrendous guilt passes through him like lightning, and it suddenly occurs to him that he isn’t ready to face his mother again. She has always been like a column of smoke –delicate, beautiful and kicked by the wind, but to see her older and weaker scares him to death. That one summer alone in the mountains created a minefield in the valley below. To see the lines he chiselled into her face, and the yellow he cast on the whites of her eyes, and the crack he worsened in her already quiet voice--...is he even sorry?   
  
Lindsey has her car door open and is half in and out, staring at him with grey eyes like a thousand tonne anvils. “You coming?”   
  
Miles swallows. “I’ll just have a cigarette here.” He buys himself a few minutes, at least. “You go on ahead.”   
  
She nods, and they both depart from the car. Locking it, she begins up the dirt track towards mom’s house, in the distance, before turning, and lingering. It seems to pain her to say, but she says, “Miles don’t--...”   
  
The hesitation has his attention.   
  
“There’s no point in feeling guilty over it. There’s no hard feelings.” Now, she resembles the Lindsey who knew when she was all of sixteen, the fierce and loyal older sister, with hope left unspoiled within her. “You were just a kid. It wasn’t fair of dad to--...”   
  
Cigarette lit, Miles looks at her feet and smiles benignly. “Dad was never fair anyway.”   
  
Lindsey says nothing to that. The wound is open but still tender. Who is Miles to talk on the injustice of his father –when he felt the man’s wrath least? For a second it looks like Lindsey will hiss and spit like any one of the snakes on medusa’s head, but Miles is already cold and still.   
  
The gorgon waves a hand in disgust. “Quit while you’re ahead.” She says, gesturing to his cigarette. “Those things stink.”  
  
-  
  
[Leadville, 2015]  
  
Whatever it is, it smells fantastic. It always does.   
  
“You didn’t have to do this.” Waylon gushes, as he is lead down the hall by the hand. His only point of contact to anything but the floor is Eddie’s hand, somehow always warm, large enough to almost engulf his own. His eyes take in the hall he knows so well, but his sense of smell is overwhelmed.   
  
Eddie usually prepares their meals, as the passionate and superior cook of the two, but it isn’t usually so ceremonious. Or so fragrant.   
  
They pause when they reach the kitchen door. Waylon recognises his only noisy floorboard creaking beneath his feet, and with a smile around his words he can hear Eddie near-whisper.   
  
“Would you like to sit, Darling?”  
  
The candlelight is his only illumination as he sits, taken by the romance of the view. “Oh, Ed,” He murmurs, “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me.”   
  
Food is a terribly emotional thing for Waylon. It was his mother’s only effective means of conveying her love: an unwanted trait that had been passed down on her side like an heirloom. As a child he was lovingly stuffed, but left starving for conversation –craving answers instead of entrées to explain the feelings that made him hateful and confused.   
  
Waylon stopped wanting to play at marriage and castles and families very early on –he didn’t want to hear how pretty he was. And ever the attentive mother, it was chalked down to self-consciousness. Mother said that a princess could be any size and be beautiful, that it didn’t matter.   
  
But when she found him, sheared like a lamb, scissors in the hands of a naive child, he was no longer beautiful to her. He was embarrassing –and for that he was punished.    
  
Waylon began to shrink. By the start of middle-school he was a much more conventional cut of pretty. His hair grew out.  For a while, it was enough for his mother, content enough with tales of how pretty he was, and how elegant his figure was even when Waylon chose shirts and jeans to his school functions, and wore his hair pulled tightly back, and liked to be called by his last name far more than his first.   
  
The food grew warm again. It was seen as his acceptable rebellion. It gave her something to chide him for and complain about, and soon he began to swell once more with her love. She sent him off to camp hoping to hear about the boys he kissed and the friends he made.   
  
He returned with all of those things and more: a new haircut, and a new name, wanting nothing more than to feel her love.   
  
And his mother didn’t feed him for four days.   
  
When at last the meals resumed, it spoke volumes of how his mother felt. The food was bland and unseasoned and cold. Sometimes it stopped without any explanation or warning. Waylon shrank throughout highschool, becoming nothing but bones stuck together with glue, flat-chested and angular. What did his father say? As usual, nothing. Working and absent.   
  
Waylon was thin for as long as he was unhappy, until he found Eddie. Eddie –whose love was warm and nourishing. After years of illness and weakness, under the other man’s care, Waylon regained the parts of himself his mother had amputated: his strong legs and his soft stomach and his energy.   
  
Gestures like this only remind him, as Eddie pours him a red wine that pairs with the meal nicely. He is lucky –luckier than anybody could know, to have all of this. He is in love, he is cherished and safe.   
  
At his initial silence, Eddie leans, the candlelight parting shadows on his face. “Is something the matter, Darling?”   
  
Searching momentarily, Waylon finds his hand in the darkness and squeezes. “Not a thing.” He promises. “Is there anything I can do –beyond eating it? I-I feel rude.”   
  
Eddie’s teeth appear in a meaty smile, amused. “Nonsense. There is no greater compliment to the chef, after all.” As usual, he’s right. “And how is it?”   
  
[Buena Vista, 2015]  
  
“Food’s great, Ma.”   
  
The food isn’t great, but the company is.   
  
Miles is the only man at the table, and it relieves him. His sisters surround him, his mother at the head of the table. He can’t remember the last time they had a family meal where he felt this safe, and calm. He doesn’t mind that the food is, frankly, undercooked. It seems a small price to pay.   
  
How many years has it been since he last saw them? And how many more that they were all together, like this?   
  
Allie is at his left with the salt. Cecelia is to his left, impassively reading. Cecelia loves to read. The very act itself eclipses his other memories of her entirely. She rarely speaks, conscious of a terrible stutter that started in childhood. It was before Miles’ lifetime, and involved a being near death and a freight truck.   
  
Miles likes Allie best. Between all of his sisters, she was the most ferocious and compassionate all at once. She is as angry in Lindsey but without the resentfulness, and as compassionate as Cecelia without simpering. The differences aren’t too important. It is this fear and weariness of human nature that binds them all. All of them remain godless and childless but Jenny.   
  
Miles had been taken aback completely when he’d arrived –nearly dropping his single back when he’d seen Jenny: demure and chaste, standing in the hall to greet him with a baby in her arms.   
  
Lindsey had taken him aside after the greetings, for an explanation. ‘Yeah, it’s hers,’ she’s said, ‘Maybe it just appeared. Jen’s a goddamn nun, practically’.   
  
Miles never thought any of them would have kids after the childhood they had. He never thought they trust a man again. And for the most part, he was right.   
  
He takes a break a few minutes into dinner to use the upstairs bathroom. There are childhood pictures hanging up and he does his best to avoid the eyes of them. Pre-Colorado, Miles is close to his father in all of them. Those photographed have colour to their faces. They make a real picture at being happy. The older he gets, the more distance is between Miles and everyone else in the pictures until the only recent ones of him are where he is alone.   
  
There is –amazing, a picture of his father out in the hall. He is in uniform with his mother.   
  
Miles hasn’t looked at him in years, and he still feels afraid by the man’s eyes. The ones he sees on himself. The ones full of anger and judgement. Curious, Miles touches the photo, very gently, with his finger, and swallows, feeling that recognisable terror of dread feel him.   
  
To himself, he realises he can talk back to his father now. Here in this house, he doesn’t have anything to fear. His eyes move instead to his mother, and he reminds himself that years have passed. They all made it out alive.   
  
At the image of his father, he murmurs, “I’m not afraid of you.” Not anymore. He’d older now. He grew up.   
  
Miles goes to descend the staircase, feeling no desire to look any longer.   
  
What causes him to pause on the stair is a picture of him, at thirteen, standing on the gravel outside their house in Michigan, with bright pink sneakers on. They were never bought for him. They were never given to him. His father threw them in the woodchipper eventually.   
  
They were not his to destroy.   
  
[Colorado Springs, 1998]  
  
Miles has never seen a boy cry before. It makes him feel cold inside.   
  
Not knowing what to do, he says, “Boys don’t cry, y’know.”   
  
And Waylon just laughs. “I’m sorry.” The other boy whispers, gently, “I’m –‘I’m new to this.”   
  
The sun is sill setting on them. Waylon, golden before him, is starting to look more joyful than sorrowful, and it’s making Miles feel a bit better. He doesn’t know how to feel, exactly. He thinks that the haircut makes Waylon look handsome, but the thought scares him more than the tears.   
  
Miles feels as if the confusion inside of him will make his head heavy. He knows what boys are supposed to be, because he knows what his father has said. Boys are strong and tough and boys don’t cry and they don’t get pushed around. But Waylon is a boy, and he isn’t tough, and he cries, and he listens. Miles doesn’t understand why it makes more sense to him than anything his father has said.   
  
Even worse: Miles doesn’t understand why it makes him feel at home.   
  
Turning away from Waylon, he goes back towards their bags –and turns back after he finds his shoes missing. Waylon is still teary staring at his reflection when Miles accuses him. “Did you take my shoes?”   
  
Waylon lifts a foot from the water and Miles can see his shoes on the other boys feet, soaked, useless to him. The other boy looks horrified in the realisation, and a hand comes up to his mouth in dismay. “I –I didn’t realise I was still wearing them--...I –I’m so sorry.”   
  
He starts walking towards Miles again, and Miles feels a strange lightness attach itself to his breaths. The feeling is strange and scary. He backs away a little as if to halt the other boy, terrified.   
  
“I—I’ll just wear yours, it’s fine.”   
  
It’s reason enough to turn away, and he does, hunched over, slipping one foot into the bright pink sneaker. They fit, he is relieved to find, and he laces them up. He thinks nothing of the shoes as much as the horrible flutter on the end of each breath. All of a sudden he feels so sensitive and conscious. When he met Waylon, at first, he felt similar, but in a far less intense way. Now he is scared and feels foolish. He doesn’t understand what’s happening.   
  
Even after he’s done lacing the shoes he remains knealt away. He chalks the feeling in his chest up to paranoia. They should never have left the others. They should never have run off. His mother will worry and his father will yell and it’s not like they’ll achieve anything. He hears, or imagines hearing, the distant sound of voices, and scorns himself.   
  
What were they going to do? How long did he think he could survive without being found, living off of the three Charleston chews his mother packed for him?   
  
Over his shoulder, now out of the water, Waylon has a hand in his now-short hair and is smiling fully. “Does it look okay?”   
  
Miles doesn’t rise or turn around. The sudden sound of Waylon’s voice scares him even more. He dips his head slightly and swallows, at a sudden loss. There has to be something he can say but his mind is blank. Too much of his world is now nonsense to him.   
  
But his silence twitches like fire, and then Waylon’s hand is on his back, and he stands, going to walk away, but not quite finding it within him.   
  
“Miles?” His eyes close. He thinks of his father. He tries to forget. “Miles, what’s wrong?”   
  
With no answer, he turns to face Waylon –they are roughly equal in height and come eye-to-eye, even though Miles is skinnier, woefully thin, and white in the face. He seems to take in all of Waylon very seriously, scanning his face and his hair and his shoulder until his gaze becomes too heavy and drops to the floor.   
  
His insides flare with heat and intensity when Waylon takes one his hands, even more suddenly.   
  
He closes his eyes, briefly, to escape the feeling of fear he feels upon seeing Waylon, shutting everything else out. In the darkness of it, his breathing steadies and he exhales, swallowing.   
  
And then Waylon surprises him. By kissing him.   
  
It’s as frightful and hasty as lightning and Miles’ eyes open very suddenly, feeling the urge to swing out wildly. He staggers back, nearly falling over, staring back at Waylon. The other boys looks just about as lost, and even more frightened.   
  
Waylon’s eyes, drying with tears, are on the verge of spilling once more and the sorrow is so true Miles is unsure he can handle it. He sure as shit can’t handle the way Waylon’s voice falls apart, breaking slightly when he whispers, “Did you not--”  
  
Miles swallows. He flinches at a shadow to his side, but the grass is just swayed by the wind, and it’s only the shadow of the cross. “Do that again.” He murmurs.   
  
Waylon does. Waylon puts a brave hand on his shoulder and Miles feels the tears pressed onto the skin of his face, terrible and damning and intimate as they kiss again.   
  
Perhaps it only lasts a second, if that—but it is Miles’ favourite infinity. The shame will not come until later, nor the fear or the doubt, and in the moment the confusion clears to relief, to clarity and explanation. To love.   
  
Waylon pulls away squinting with his face lit up in the brilliance of a flashlight.   
  
Miles turns, following the light, and then hears a yell. “They’re over here!”   
  



End file.
